and a little bit of everything

Preparing for Marriage

As many of you know by now I am getting married in 192 days (but who is counting). I knew exactly what I wanted as far as planning the wedding goes (I have had a wedding board on pinterest since middle school…..). Recently, I have been focusing more on what comes after the wedding. Our culture portrays everything as a fairytale leading up to the wedding. I am a sucker for a good Hallmark movie. Yes they are predictable, but I love the typical boy meets girl, fall and love, and get married. For me, thats pretty much how it went. I knew I wanted to marry my fiance long before he proposed. People ask how I knew and it is something that I can’t quite explain. I just did. Now I have a ring on my finger and a constantly growing pile of wedding decor in my house (I can’t stop shopping!). After spending countelss hours planning and pinning the thought occured to me. The wedding doesn’t matter. WHAT?!?! I can still get married without a wedding? You see, there is more to a marriage than a wedding in a barn with roses and lace and burlap and christmas lights and everything I have ever dreamed my wedding would be. Somewhere along the way I feel that we have lost the purpose for the wedding. A wedding is not to show off your money or to out do your friends. A wedding is about two people becoming one. You don’t need a fancy wedding for that happen (not saying I am not going to have an amazing wedding because you better believe I am going to plan something amazing!!! 🙂 ). I have been reading this book by Vicki Courtney called “Ever After”. I do not know if I have ever had a book define me so well. Everything she talks about it seems as though I have had that same thought. It’s about every girl’s dream fairytale. Prince Charming comes and proposes and you ride off into the sunset to your castle. She takes this story and makes it reality. My Prince Charming will fail me. He is human. We will never live in a castle and our lives will not be perfect. She says “our culture has made an idol out of the wedding day and a mockery out of a marriage”. This is basically the point of this blog. I get so caught up in the wedding plans that I forget about what comes after. THE MARRIAGE! That is the point of it all. Marriage is hard and it is work. My expectations will never be met. If I keep these fairytale expectations I will be nothing but disappointed. Alex will disapoint me and I will disapoint him. I will burn dinner. I will forget to clean. I will spend too much money (Whoops). I will make mistakes and so will he. We will not live like Cinderella and Prince Charming. However, we will have the foundation that will make our marriage last. We will have the foundation of Christ. He is the only Prince Charming that will never disappoint. He will never fail us. Take heart in that. Ecclesiastes 4:12 says, “A cord of three strands is not quicly broken”.This is how I will chose to go into my marriage. I will choose to leave my perfectionist fairytale expectations and cling to Christ.